The Month in WordPress: November 2018

WordPress 5.0 is almost ready for release, including an all-new content editing experience. Volunteers all across the project are gearing up for the launch and making sure everything is ready. Read on to find out what’s been happening and how you can get involved.

WordPress 5.0 Close to Launch

The release date for WordPress 5.0 has not yet been set, but the second release candidate (RC) is now available. The final release date will be determined based on feedback and testing of this RC. The Core development team has been posting daily updates on the progress of their work on v5.0, with the number of open issues for this release decreasing every day.

The primary feature of this release is the new editor that will become the default WordPress experience going forward. A number of people have been seeking more direct feedback from the release leads about the progress of this release, which @matt has facilitated by hosting one-to-one discussions with anyone in the community who wanted to talk with him about it. He has also published an extended FAQ covering many of the questions people have been asking.

Alongside the development of the new editor, the Mobile team has been working hard to bring the WordPress mobile apps up to speed. They plan to make a beta version available in February 2019.

New WordPress Support Platform Goes Live

WordPress user documentation has long been hosted on the WordPress Codex, but for the past couple of years an ambitious project has been underway to move that content to a freshly-built WordPress-based platform. This project, named “HelpHub,” is now live and the official home of WordPress Support.

There is still plenty of content that needs to be migrated from the Codex to HelpHub, but the initial move is done and the platform is ready to have all WordPress’ user documentation moved across. HelpHub will be the first place for support, encouraging users to find solutions for themselves before posting in the forums.

Spanish WordPress Community Pushes Translations Forward

The WordPress community in Spain has been hard at work making sure as much of the WordPress project as possible is available in Spanish. They have recently translated more of the project than ever — including WordPress Core, WordPress.org, the mobile apps and the top 120 plugins in the Directory.

This achievement has largely been possible due to the fact that the Spanish translation team has over 2,500 individuals contributing to it, making it the largest translation team across the whole project.